Several rockets fired from the Gaza Strip targeted Tel Aviv and its environs as well as southern Israel right on New Year's Day on Monday, AFP journalists on the ground reported.
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Air raid sirens wailed in the Israeli metropolis, and in Tel Aviv journalists were able to observe rockets being intercepted by Israeli missile defense systems. People celebrating the New Year on a festive street took shelter on the roadsides as others continued celebrating.
The attack on southern Israel occurred at 12 noon local time (10 p.m. GMT) and the one on Tel Aviv at 12:01 a.m. (10:01 p.m. GMT), AFP journalists said.
“I was scared, it was the first time I saw rockets, it's terrifying, this is the life we lead, it's crazy,” Gabriel Zemelman, 26, told AFP outside a bar in Tel Aviv, in He had come to celebrate the New Year with his friends.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, claimed responsibility for the two attacks in a video posted on its social networks, claiming that M90 rockets were used in “response to the massacres of civilians carried out by Israel.” to have .
The Israeli army confirmed the attack without initially reporting any casualties or damage.
The rocket attacks come as Israel continues its relentless bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip. The war was sparked by Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7, which killed around 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
In response, Israel vowed to “destroy” the Palestinian movement and relentlessly shelled the Gaza Strip, where 129 of the approximately 250 people kidnapped in Israel on October 7 are still being held hostage.
According to a new report released by the Hamas Health Ministry on Sunday, 21,822 people, mostly women, teenagers and children, have been killed and 56,451 injured in the small, overpopulated Palestinian territory since the war began.